Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Windows Live family of services expands; see the Q&A for a (software + services) (status + strategy) snapshot.

Today we’re also releasing a couple of exciting new services from Windows Live into managed beta testing: Windows Live Photo Gallery beta and Windows Live Folders beta.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a stand-alone service that upgrades Windows Vista’s Windows Photo Gallery. Offered at no charge, Windows Live Photo Gallery enables both Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 customers to share, edit, organize and print photos and digital home videos.The initial managed beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery beta is available today in nine markets around the world so far (including the United States (English and Spanish), China, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, and Spain), with more to come. We’re really proud of this service because it’s so easy to share photos – it’s really as easy as sending an e-mail. You can also easily publish your photos to your Windows Live Spaces.

We’re also releasing Windows Live Folders into managed beta today, which will provide customers with 500 megabytes of online storage at no charge. We see this limited managed beta in the United States right now as just a starting point for us, and we’ll begin collecting input from beta users during the testing process, which will be useful when developing future versions of the service. Like I’ve said, it’s very important to us that we give our customers multiple options for connecting to family, friends and information, and share information and other things with the people they care about the most.